Cape Town - A teenage girl in a wheelchair is one of more than 2 000 people who share the five taps and 11 flush toilets that are available in the YAB informal settlement in Khayelitsha.
To relieve herself, she must wheel across a busy road to reach one of the communal toilets. Once there, she has to roll out of her wheelchair and crawl along the floor to get inside the toilet cubicle, which is not large enough to accommodate her chair.
This was a “complete infringement of her right to dignity”, said South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) deputy chairwoman Pregs Govender, who is doing a three-day inspection in the Western Cape where communities have lodged complaints about their living conditions. “There are the same rights, protected in the constitution, for everybody regardless of whether you are black or white, able or disabled, male or female.”
Govender said socio-economic issues such as sanitation, water, education and housing were about human rights, not politics.
“It’s a countrywide concern. (We say) government, whoever you are, the poorer people don’t care. They just want to see that you are doing your job.”
To support the government’s efforts to improve its services, the SAHRC was talking to relevant departments about the problems it encountered and possible solutions. But Govender said there was often a discrepancy between what government officials reported and what the commissioners saw during their site inspections.
Bulelwa Baleni, a member of the YAB residents’ committee who had complained to the SAHRC, said that there were not enough taps for the 261 households that lived along Pama Road. Also, many of the taps were not working.
There was no lighting, which made the toilets unsafe to visit at night. Baleni said many families opted to use buckets in their shacks after dark, rather than risk being attacked during a visit to the outside toilet.
She also pointed out that the shacks were so close together that there was no access for emergency vehicles or police. Being so close to a busy road, with no protective wall or barrier, also meant there was a risk residents, such as the teenage girl in the wheelchair, may be hit by speeding cars.
SAHRC provincial manager Melanie Dugmore said the commission, and the government, could not deal with sanitation as an isolated issue. In this part of Khayelitsha, access to sanitation was linked to housing, crime and other socio-economic factors.
In other communities, such as Europe and Barcelona, residents were unhappy with the types of toilets they were forced to use. “This is a very complex issue, and we need to involve all spheres of government.”
The SAHRC is visiting problem areas around the country, after hearings last year found huge problems, particularly with sanitation and water.
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